HP ProBook 4710s Review

A few months back we told you about the ProBook 4510s, HP’s all-new 15.6-inch notebook aimed at business users who need just the essentials at a good price. The newest member of the ProBook family is the 4710s, a 17.3-inch desktop replacement model that also delivers a good mix of features and performance for an attractive $1,099. Unfortunately, some questionable design and component decisions—no doubt aimed at keeping the price down—hold it back.

The ProBook 4710s doesn’t have the panache of the more exclusive (and expensive) HP EliteBook or Dell Studio XPS lines, but its glossy, black, squared-off chassis is reasonably stylish for a business machine. The 4710s is surprisingly thin (1.3 inches) and light (6.8 pounds) for a machine with a ponderous 16.2-by-10.6-inch footprint. Unfortunately, it shows every fingerprint when you touch it. On the plus side, the large footprint nets you a full-size Chiclet-style keyboard with a separate number pad. The spill-resistant keyboard is very comfortable, with good key travel. One oddity, though: The legends on the Function keys denoting the primary and secondary functions are not color-coded, so figuring out when you need the Fn key can be confusing.

And while we’re nit-picking, the touch pad on the ProBook 4710s could be larger. On a netbook you can forgive a small pad, but a machine this size with a screen this large deserves a pad bigger than 3x1.75 inches. The mouse buttons, too, are unnecessarily narrow, and they are hinged at the top rather than being a full-travel button, so you have to be sure to press the bottom of the buttons at an e-mail to register a click. They also pick up the glossy black design theme of the exterior and keyboard backplane, which means they pick up fingerprints, too. And speaking of fingerprints: The ProBook 4710s does not include a fingerprint reader, which we feel should be standard fare on a business notebook these days. Also missing are dedicated multimedia control keys in the name of keeping the keyboard deck uncluttered (and, we suspect, costs down).

The HP ProBook 4710s features a roomy keyboard, complete with number pad, but the expansive keyboard surround could use some multimedia controls and a larger touch pad.

We have no complaints about the 17.3-inch widescreen. The LED-backlit panel is very bright and delivers rich colors. The 1,600x900 resolution isn’t the full 1,080p (1,920x1,080) multimedia addicts crave, but it is still HD and appropriate for a business machine where you’ll actually need to read the text on the screen without squinting. The matte anti-glare coating is also appropriate for a business notebook likely to be used under harsh lighting conditions, but it does lend a soft-focus look, especially during video playback. Otherwise, DVDs on the big screen looked good, with decent motion reproduction. The screen is big enough to have multiple windows open at once and also to use the ProBook 4710s as a presentation device. The built-in speakers put out enough volume, but overall audio quality is disappointing. Music playback sounded more strident and tinny than we had expected from a chassis this large. Clearly there’s room for larger speakers and a subwoofer, but once again, HP seems to have cut corners.

The 4710s comes with a spacious 500GB hard drive, a multiformat DVD burner, 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity. You also get a 5-in-1 memory card reader and an ExpressCard slot, though it’s the narrow-format 34mm variety rather than 54mm, which is an odd choice on a desktop replacement. As for ports, you get four USB ports, LAN and modem jacks, and VGA and HDMI outputs (HDMI is a particularly nice touch on a business notebook). Given that there’s room on the edges, an eSATA port would have been nice. HP does not offer an embedded wireless broadband option on this platform as it does with the smaller ProBook 4510s, though that’s less of an issue given the ProBook 4710s is unlikely to see much road use because of its size.

Cleary where HP spent the money is on the ProBook’s performance components. You get a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 processor with 4GB of RAM and discrete ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4300 GPU. The ProBook 4710s delivered scores of 3,668 on Futuremark’s PCMark Vantage, which measures overall system performance, and 5,101 on CineBench 10, which focuses on the processor and graphics performance. Both numbers are good compared with the similarly priced Dell Studio 15 and the Toshiba Qosmio G55-Q802. It was also pretty quick on our Windows Media Encoder 9 trial, completing the task in 6 minutes flat, which is faster than more costly machines like the best-in-class Alienware M17 (though the more recent M17x completed this same test in a blistering 3 minutes and 48 seconds. It also costs nearly five times as much). The ProBook’s time of 3:58 on our iTunes encoding test was about 20 seconds slower than average compared with all desktop replacements we’ve tested lately, but still faster than the Apple MacBook Pro’s time of 4 minutes and 8 seconds.

Thanks to the dedicated graphics, the ProBook 4710s also delivered better 3D performance than we’re used to from a business machine. It scored 3,153 on 3DMark06 (at 1,024x768), which is ahead of the business-oriented Lenovo ThinkPad T400s (1,073) but behind the consumer-oriented Dell Studio XPS 16 (5,243), which makes sense, so long as your business doesn’t include being a graphic designer. You won’t mistake the ProBook 4710s for a gaming rig, but it has enough 3D power for any business apps that require 3D processing, as well as the occasional game. We saw a playable 36.5fps on Company of Heroes when we dialed back the resolution to1,024x768. Battery life of 2 hours 48 minutes on our unforgiving DVD rundown test is much better than the average for big-screen desktop replacements, which typically last only 2 hours before needing a charge.

The ProBook 4710s has the usual assortment of ports and slots—four USB, VGA, HDMI, LAN, modem, memory card, and ExpressCard arrayed around three edges—but the ExpressCard slot is the narrow 34mm variety, and there’s no eSATA port.

The ProBook 4710s includes a 2MP Webcam, which delivered a very good image under bright lighting, with very little motion blur. In a dim room, the camera eked out a dark but usable image. We like the bundled HP WebCam utility’s clean user interface. The settings menu lets you pick from eight resolution settings, ranging from 176x144 to 1,600x1,200. It also has seven preset profiles for different lighting conditions such as sunny, cloudy, fluorescent, and incandescent.

We also like the security extras you get with the included HP ProtectTools suite. You can set software-based full drive encryption to protect files and completely wipe files or the entire drive with HP File Sanitizer and HP Disk Sanitizer. Should you forget your system password, HP SpareKey can give you the chance to reset it by answering some personal questions you chose during setup of the utility. Another plus is the HP QuickLook 2 feature. Just hit the small button next to the power button when the PC is off or in hibernation and you can access your contacts and calendar without having to boot to Windows. And speaking of Windows, you can configure the ProBook 4710s with any available flavor of Windows (including XP) as well as SuSE Linux and FreeDOS. HP backs the machine with a one-year warranty and toll-free 24/7 tech support.

The ProBook 4710s isn’t perfect, but its few shortcoming were made to keep the price as close to $1,000 as possible. And HP did not cut corners when it came to the most important attributes for a desktop replacement: The LED-backlit HD screen and the CPU, graphics processor, and generous amount of RAM, all of which make it an impressive performer for the price.

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